February 16, 2013

knock-off ‘hello’ shirts

I’m sure we’ve all seen the super cute ‘hello’ and ‘hi’ sweatshirts around. This shop definitely makes a very adorable sweatshirt. But I’m just not a fan of spending $35 for a piece of clothing that my kid will grow out of in a year or less, not to mention stain or somehow destroy before it can be handed down to the next kiddo.

So, to save some money I made a knock-off of my own. Instead of sweatshirts, I used some clearance short sleeve and long sleeve t-shirts for my boys.

[That’s a much better price than $35!]

And rather than copy their font, I used my own handwriting! I had to do a bunch of practice ones until I got the ‘hello’ and ‘hi’ that I liked best. I thought I’d try a ‘yo’ but I changed my mind in the end.

I use this feature a lot on my Silhouette. First I scan the things that I have handwritten, then I ‘import to my library’ in Silhouette. From then on it’s in my library and I can use it when ever I want. All you have to do is trace it so you can get the outline and the Silhouette will do the rest! Anyway, I used ‘hello’ and ‘hi’ for there shirts.

I used vinyl (from US Cutter) and peeled away the words. I transferred the vinyl to the shirts and used it as my stencil. Then, with some fabric paint from Joann’s, I painted in the ‘hello’ and ‘hi’ on the shirts. [don’t forget to put cardboard inside the shirt, so the paint doesn’t leak through to the back]. Let it sit for a few hours to dry, then peel away the vinyl and tada!

Overall it was a quick and easy project. Personally I think they turned out just as adorable as the real deal, only I saved about $90 for these three shirts. Since these were so easy, I decided to make a few other shirts. I’ll post about them when I have them done!

*Disclaimer: I was inspired by but did not replicate the exact design. The shirts are different, application is different, the font is my own.